Sodom: straight, upside down, inside out

This past Sunday at Mass the first reading was a story about Sodom and Gomorrah. No, not the one about homosexuality (which is not actually about homosexuality anyway), but the wonderful, semi-comic bargaining exchange between Abraham and God – the former trying all his persuasive skills to change the mind of the Boss. One can almost see a third-rate actor warming to this role: "If I may be so bold … if I will not anger my Lord", an arch eye rolled towards the audience.

La Destruction de Sodome et Gomorrhe: François de Nomé (c.1593-1630)

The Cities of the Plain are to be destroyed. "If there are 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10 good men there will you spare it?" pleads Abraham, as if reducing his merchandise in some staggered, cosmic clearance sale. His wheedling is to no avail. No good men could be found (perhaps he should have tried women?) and the Boss orders fire and brimstone, sufficient for full destruction. A Hiroshima moment.

It's a nightmare passage for the fundamentalist. Surely this conversation cannot literally have happened like this? What God would …? It only makes sense as both a parable and as an early step in a magnificent learning curve from an all-too-human understanding of blind, blood-letting vengeance to an gradual eye-opening (soul-opening) view of God as compassionate and as approachable – a view now commonplace in the three religions which claim Abraham as father.

But then there is another parable. In Luke's Gospel another Jewish teacher unfolds another outrageous tale: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?" Wait a minute! Abraham was hoping that ten goodies would produce a merciful change of heart. Jesus is claiming that the heart is already so merciful that rescuing one baddie is worth risking the safety of the ninety nine goodies. This is Sodom upside down.

But in our times the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has been reversed in a different, darker way: Sodom inside out. In Auschwitz God appeared to permit the destruction of the good men whilst keeping intact the city and the evil-dooers - at least for far too long. This monstrous injustice has sewn doubt in the hearts not just of fundamentalists but of all human beings of faith and none. Elie Wiesel famously dug deep into this mystery in his book 'Night':

Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing … And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows …"

Such a story deserves a period of silence after it, but permit me a short coda. This past week Archbishop Desmond Tutu had his own Abrahamic moment when he claimed he would rather go to Hell than worship a homophobic God. I was impressed and began to wonder whether, instead of bargaining, Abraham should simply have said to God: "If you won't spare Sodom I'm going down there now and you can destroy me too if you wish".

When God in our stories and parables begins behaving with compassion there's a good chance we will do so too because we will finally have heard the still small voice above the fire of human selfishness and the earthquake of human cruelty.